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The Victoria Mayors Continued

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         The plat books also date back to the beginnings of city incorporation, but with descriptions in longitude and latitude and meridians I might as well be reading a foreign language.  The plat books were less than helpful to me because many of them are not very legible.  I suspect mimeograph machines had something to do with that.

         Also, the plats are arranged in alphabetical order according to the name of the plat, not according to the year in which the plat was filed.  If you don't know the name of the plat, you're up a creek, maybe the Six Mile Creek.  Still, I fingered dutifully through all of them in case a precious tidbit related to the missing years might surface.  Nothing surfaced.  Besides, most plats were signed by the county, not the city.

         After spending some time at the Carver County Historical Museum in Waconia, reading microfiche files of the Chaska and Waconia papers published in 1936, I found nothing to confirm either John Diethelm or Bill Braunworth to be mayor in that year although I did read that both gentlemen and their wives motored here and there for various social occasions. 

         It's nice that county newspapers, including the Victoria Gazette, are on microfiche at the museum, but such archives seem prehistoric to me since they can't be digitally searched.  It was like sitting through an old silent movie reel.

         So be it!  Time marches on. 

***

         To sum up briefly, the city ordinance binders revealed that J. A. Diethelm was elected the first President of the Victoria Village Council on March 14th, 1916, three months after the city's incorporation, and that he signed Ordinances #1 through #7.

         I did not find a date on Ordinance #1 but it states, "The Village Council of the Village of Victoria do ordain a fire department shall be organized in the Village of Victoria." 

         In fact, however, the Victoria Fire Department was organized in 1913 and the entire Fire Department and City celebrated that centennial in July 2013.  Go figure.  But it probably explains why I found no date on Ordinance #1.

         Ordinance #2, which is dated April 13th, 1916, regulates hawkers and peddlers, "providing a license fee of $10 if conveyance is propelled by any mechanical means or a fee of $5 if carrying merchandise by foot." 

         A reading of the city ordinances gives a certain kind of history of Victoria from the platting of its first streets to the regulation of liquor licenses, loose dogs, and fire protection -- all the way to the present day where streets, liquor licenses, loose dogs, and fire protection are still part of the conversation.

         I learned that the terminology changed from "President" to "Mayor" with the election of Ben Wartman.  Regardless of terminology, I had seventeen names of people who sat at the helm of the Victoria Village Council, later termed the Victoria City Council, over these last 100 years.  As I've said before, I thought the list was complete.

         In my struggle to determine with certainty which of them served during those questionable years, I called Jennie Kretsch at City Hall one more time.  It was the afternoon of Thursday, April 30th.  It had been a very long month.

         "Have you any old city council minutes on file?" I pleaded, having heard long ago that Whitey Wellens, early City Clerk, used to take handwritten minutes and that he kept them on file in the trunk of his car.

         Jennie said the earliest minutes the city had were dated 1969 to 1971.  I reviewed them and, yes, they told me that Chub Aretz was indeed the mayor of Victoria in 1970.  In trying to figure out who was mayor in 1966, I had begun to question if I even had 1970 accurate.

         I was beginning to think I would have to put an asterisk* by some of the mayors' dates with the notation *not certifiable at this time.

         And then, like a gift from the heavens, I happened upon a sweet surprise in the tiny batch of city minutes.  It was a letter addressed to my old and dear friend, the late great City Clerk Germaine Jesberg.

         Dated August 19th, 1996, it was from Charles L. Rodgers, a Government Records Analyst in the Division of Library and Archives at the Minnesota Historical Society.  He was responding to an inquiry from Germaine as she was looking for city council minutes too -- from the late '60s or early '70's -- that might reference the platting of Parkwood, a Victoria neighborhood up on 78th Street.

         This told me that the Minnesota Historical Society had a stash of city minutes in its archives.  That possibility had never crossed my mind.  The Minnesota Historical Society is foreign territory to me and not on my radar.

         I kept reading the letter and then hit pay dirt.  It was like discovering a gold mine. Part of Mr. Rodger's reply to Germaine included this sentence:  "The inventory of City of Victoria records transferred to the State Archives indicates a gap in the city council minutes ... [but] the minutes are complete from 1916 through 1967."

         I needed to read no further.  "Minutes  are complete from 1916 through 1967." Was it possible, after all, to move across the goal line in my quest for a touchdown?

 

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